One example of this is how responses are measured in response to letters mailed. If a company who is running advertisements receives a letter in relation to some of their advertisements, then the measured response assumes that the letter actually represents about ten thousand respondents. The reason? It is harder and actually requires a great deal of effort to write, address, and post a letter; while it is relatively simple to Google a corporate contact email address, composing a poorly written email, and then expecting a response that, in truth, does not represent anything quite near the ten thousand people a written, addressed, and mailed letter represents.

What this means is measured responses to specific types of correspondence.

In truth, I actually like the fact that I can email someone and within seconds (or minutes) have a response from that individual in my in-box (if they are online). I like the fact that I can go online and within a few minutes have a rather solid understanding of the employment or entertainment or a whole host of other things in a given area of the country. I like that I can get online and with some key strokes find almost anything that I am looking for and with a few more key strokes locate resources that support what I am trying to do or find or accomplish. I like the fact that we have an internet and that by tapping into it I am actually accessing a whole load of information that makes finding information, resources, and more that much easier. And I like the fact that I can Google someone and, with a little effort and some filtering, find information relatively quickly (which, actually, does include finding nothing which is also very telling).

However, what the internet also does is make it a thousand-fold easier to contact people that also makes it a thousand times harder to determine which responses are real or are spam and which constituents should be listened to or are just crackpots or a lot of other things. The point is not that elected representatives ignore emails, but it is far easier to parse information, search the emails, and in the end ignore a lot of what is in the emails when they come through. A computer can be programmed to filter a lot of things and a lot of people and a lot of places where those emails originate. In short, what happens when you email is that your email is added to a database that says either, “Yes,” or, “No,” and little else is really weighed in relation to the nature of what your opinion is. Except to say that the majority of people (not necessarily constituents) are either approve of or don’t approve of whatever thing the elected official is considering at the time.

As a result, when you go to a website (such as senate.gov) and find your elected official (in Utah that would be Orin Hatch) and you decide to send off a quick email, the outcome is not that Orin Hatch or his group of staffers who are paid to go through correspondence will read it carefully and reply appropriately, but rather that your email receives less weight on an issue and is subsequently relegated to the virtual pile of correspondence that is readily ignored by most elected officials.

With all that said, I think it is important for people to do what Rebecca said she did. However, it is also important to note that a phone call or send a real letter and what will happen is that the resources required to measure and weigh what you have to say allows for what you are saying to be weighed far more heavily than simply sending an email. Therefore, if you really want your voice to be heard and want your elected representative to consider what you have to say send a letter or make a phone call. Otherwise, you become a number and little else.

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